Tag: Boy Scout

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Bravest Things, by Ricky

Bravery can come in large or small packages. Some involve great deeds while other deeds involve only moderate or even insignificant events; any of which could be public or private.

The very first brave thing I can remember doing was also the first dumb thing I remember doing. Of course I didn’t know I was being brave or dumb; I was only 10; in the 5th grade and on my way home from school. In case you all have forgotten, I have a powerful attraction to ice cream. So strong it is that back then, if anyone had wanted to get into (and me out of ) my pants all they would have had to do was invite me to their place for ice cream, but no one knew that. You might have even seen me transform into an “ice cream-zombie”.

So, one particular week previous to my act of bravery, I had been stopping by the local grocery store where my parents shopped. I had left over lunch money and my purpose for stopping there was to buy an ice cream sandwich at a cost of 10-cents; eating it on my way home. More accurately, eating it within 20 feet of the door after exiting the store; sooner, if I could get it unwrapped while still walking to the exit.

The week following I had no left over lunch money but the attraction to ice cream was still as powerful as ever and I stopped by the store. I searched everywhere in my pockets and book binder while walking up and down the aisles but try as I might, I just could not find the money that was not there. So I became brave and dumb; I turned into a stupid kid. Carefully scanning for potential witnesses and hoping no one could hear my pounding heart, I quickly opened the ice cream cooler, removed one ice cream sandwich, placed it into my book binder and left the store.

I waited until I crossed the highway before I removed the thing, unwrapped, and ate it. On the bright side, I did throw the wrapper into a trash bin I was walking by; after all I’m no despicable litter-bug. The next four days found me doing the same thing before guilt overcame attraction. It is said by some that males think with two brains; or rather only one of the two actually thinks and the other just acts. But I learned from these experiences that males (especially boys) can hear the “siren call” of inanimate objects quite clearly, objects such as ice cream sandwiches, or firearms, or fast cars, or any baseball/football games in their vicinity or on a TV, or the call of a video game console.

This story does have an ending but not until 1969 after I joined a church while in the Air Force. I had carried my shoplifting guilt with me for all those years but it was not causing any problems until then. My homosexual acts didn’t bother me much but the shoplifting did as I joined the church. So, I wrote a letter outlining my theft, put it in an envelope along with $10.00 to cover interest on 40-cents over 10-years, and mailed it to the grocery store. I never heard back from the store, but I felt clean before God. Mailing that letter was the bravest thing I ever did out of two events to that point in my life.

The 2nd place bravest thing I had done up to 1969 occurred while I was working as a 16-year old staff member at Camp Winton, a boy scout summer camp. Our rival camp was Camp Harvey West located at the top of Echo Summit just 10 miles from my home at South Lake Tahoe. On one of my weekends off, I dressed in black and as dusk approached I set out alone to raid their camp.

I had made a white flag with the words, “Camp Winton is Best” and emblazoned it with our camp’s logo, back-to-back “W”s surrounded by a circle. It looked like two “X”s side by side but was really “W”s for the two Winton brothers; the logo of the Winton Lumber Company. The trail to the camp passed on the west side of Flagpole Peak. I climbed up to the peak where there was the stump of an old flagpole. On the west side the climb was very easy. At the end of the trail, I had to side step along a narrow ledge with both hands on the peak’s ridge to my front and a modest 50 to 100 foot cliff to my rear. As I closed in on the actual top where the flagpole was my hands had to be raised higher and higher.

I finally reached the top. At this point my arms were stretched out to their maximum length over my head. I couldn’t place my flag from this position, so I did another brave thing and another dumb thing. I grabbed the bottom of the flagpole and pulled myself up so I was straddling the peak with the pole between my legs. I was facing north. To my right was a shear 200-300 foot cliff, but it looked like a mile drop. To my left was that modest 50 to 100 foot drop which suddenly looked much farther than 100 feet.

I tied my flag to the pole, enjoyed the view for a minute or two and then decided that I’d spent enough time up here and since the sun was beginning to disappear, it was time to leave. I looked to my left to make sure I knew where to put my feet on the narrow ledge I’d arrived on but ….. the ledge was gone! Panic set in; it was getting dark and I had no way to get down; “½ a mile” drop on one side and a “two-mile” drop on the other. I sort of enjoyed the view for a couple more minutes before my brain calmed down and started thinking sense to me.

The ledge WAS really there, I just couldn’t see it because the peak was a little wider just above the ledge and narrowed to the top of the ridge I was dangling my legs on either side of. The traitorous sun kept setting and light was fading fast. I finally decided to trust my memory and swung my right leg over the ridge and ended up dangling over the left side of the ridge still hanging tightly to the pole. I still could not see or feel the ledge; a bit more panic followed until I remembered that my arms had to be fully extended before I could get up to the ridge in the first place, so I must be fully extended to get down. I relaxed my biceps and sure enough the ledge was there and I was able to return safely to the trail and complete my raid.

Lowering myself to the fullest extent of my arms is the 2nd place bravest thing I had done up to 1969. I have done other dumb things and brave things since 1969 but if I hadn’t found the courage to write that letter about the shoplifting, I doubt I would have ever found the courage to do the other brave things.

© 4 Mar 2014

About the Author

I was born in June of 1948 in Los Angeles, living first in Lawndale and then in Redondo Beach. Just prior to turning 8 years old in 1956, I began living with my grandparents on their farm in Isanti County, Minnesota for two years during which time my parents divorced.

When united with my mother and stepfather two years later in 1958, I lived first at Emerald Bay and then at South Lake Tahoe, California, graduating from South Tahoe High School in 1966. After three tours of duty with the Air Force, I moved to Denver, Colorado where I lived with my wife and four children until her passing away from complications of breast cancer four days after the 9-11 terrorist attack.

I came out as a gay man in the summer of 2010. I find writing these memories to be therapeutic.

My story blog is TheTahoeBoy.Blogspot.com

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Patriotism, by Ricky

Exactly
what is “patriotism”?  Who possesses
“patriotism”?  What does “patriotism”
look like to me?  What does “patriotism”
look like to others?
Today
is November 11th, Veterans’ Day, the holiday Americans set aside to
honor and remember our country’s military personnel, past and present, and the
resulting deaths and heroic deeds.  At
least that is what it was following the Korean “Police Action”.  The unpopular “non-declared-war conflict” in Vietnam
with the anti-war protests, primarily lead by the under 21 draftees and
draft-dodgers, tarnished this holiday for many decades.  During the years that followed, politicians
and corporate board of directors expanded the roll of “capitalist greed”
destroying American citizens’ confidence and trust in the concept of benevolent
authority.
I
am very cynical about businesses and corporate “chain” stores offering veterans
special discounts on this one day per year. 
Corporate business do these public relations gimmicks to attract money
from those people they can fool into believing the corporation actually cares
about our veterans both alive and dead. 
If they really cared, the corporations and business groups would send
their lobbyists to Congress to demand that the Veterans Administration be fully
funded and have the best facilities to serve our veterans.  But instead, they send lobbyists to ensure
laws are passed that favor their greed. 
As I said, I am very cynical.
When
I was a child, I spoke as a child; I understood as a child; I thought as a
child; I trusted as a child: but when I became a man, I eventually learned to
use my intelligence and actually think
and reason.  This I can do fairly
well.  I only act childish.
        During the American Revolution, everyone was a patriot and a
traitor.  Colonists who were patriots for
England were traitors to the revolutionaries. 
Patriots to the revolution were traitors to King George.  Both groups believed they were “right”.
Lord
Baden Powell of England founded the Boy Scout movement.  It was an organization to teach British boys
the desired character traits, sense of honor, and moral values.  No boy would willingly join a character
building group, so the name became “Scouting for Boys” and was patterned after
Baden Powell’s experience in the British army, specifically his time as a
military scout.  The Scout Oath begins,
“On my honor, I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country. …”  It is the duty to my country which is the
patriotic problem.
        Raising generations of children to believe without critical thought
that “duty to my country” means, “My country right or wrong” is a recipe for
disaster.  This is never more
historically apparent than during military activity.  For example, when the Redcoats retreated from
Concord and Lexington back to Boston, they marched in ordered columns,
shoulder-to-shoulder while those pesky and cowardly rebels shot them from
behind trees and rock fencing, and ran away without giving a fair fight.  Another example is the fighting at Gettysburg
during the Civil War; specifically Pickett’s Charge.  Thousands of brave men again stood
shoulder-to-shoulder and walked across a mile of open field into the point
blank firing of those damn Yankee soldiers and cannons all of whom were protected
by a rock wall.  Thousands of very
courageous Confederate soldiers died doing their duty to their country
as they believed it to be.  Nonetheless,
it was sheer stupidity.
        Back to the British: during WWI, the British army lost
approximately 60,000 men on July 1, 1916 (at the battle of Somme) by sending
them to cross an open field (the so called “no mans’ land”) into multiple
German machine gun emplacements.  Again,
sheer stupidity.  “Aye, but we showed the
buggers.”  At least by WWII, everyone
learned to make like Little Egypt and crawl on their bellies like a reptile
when crossing open fields under fire; except the Japanese whose “banzai”
charges into automatic weapons fire met with the exact same results obtained at
Gettysburg and the battle Somme in WWI.
        “My country, right or wrong” brings death and destruction to
soldiers and civilians alike.  This is
not a good definition for “Duty to my country”. 
I do believe that every citizen has responsibilities: voting, paying
taxes, engaging in dialog over public issues, serving on juries when selected,
and to use their God-given intelligence to think and reason and not to trust
blindly.  I do not believe that any
citizen need die overseas to keep Dick Chaney’s or Scrooge McDuck’s money-bin
full.
        I believe a true patriot: resists warmongers and bullies, speaks out for
truth, exposes government and corporate corruption, and when necessary or
unavoidable, makes the other guy die stupidly for his country.
© 11 November 2013 

About
the Author 

I was born in June of 1948 in Los Angeles, living first in Lawndale
and then in Redondo Beach.  Just prior to
turning 8 years old in 1956, I was sent to live with my grandparents on their
farm in Isanti County, Minnesota for two years during which time my parents
divorced.
When united with my mother and stepfather two years later
in 1958, I lived first at Emerald Bay and then at South Lake Tahoe, California,
graduating from South Tahoe High School in 1966.  After three tours of duty with the Air Force,
I moved to Denver, Colorado where I lived with my wife and four children until
her passing away from complications of breast cancer four days after the 9-11-2001
terrorist attack.
I came out as a gay man in the summer of 2010.   I find writing these memories to be
therapeutic.
My story blog is, TheTahoeBoy.Blogspot.com
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Summer Camp, by Lewis


[Foreword:  Some of you may remember my story of June
17th on the topic One Summer Afternoon, wherein I described my frantic and
futile attempt to qualify for the camp lake beach reserved for youngsters who
could demonstrate their ability to swim. 
Had I succeeded in drowning myself in that attempt, I would not have
been able to write a second essay on the much-overrated “joys” of
summer camp experiences that continued to plague me throughout my tender years.  I submit this in the hope that we can
dispense with any and all topics related to camping for the foreseeable
future.]
During the summers of my
9th through 13th years, going to camp became a sacrificial ritual imposed upon
me by parents who must have been desperate to get me out of a chair in front of
the television or out of BB gun range of sparrows unfortunate enough to inhabit
the branches of elm trees within three blocks of our house.  The only condition was that I had to be home
before the Bermuda grass needed cutting again–a span of between 7 and 10
days.  I felt that I was being punished
for being an only child.  They could
hardly to afford to send any additional children to camp so there was always a
chance, as their hypothetical first-born, I could have had the option of
staying home.
My introductory stay at
camp was also the longest–10 days.  It
was the camp with the lake that I wrote about before.  We slept in cabins with, as I recall, five
bunk beds each–two along each side and one across the back wall.  After about four days, I was struck with the
worst case of home-sickness I can recall having.  I had made no friends, the food sucked, and I
had just the day before almost drowned. 
I remember writing a letter to my parents in which I said,
word-for-word, “If you love me, you’ll come and get me”.  I think I might have left a tear stain or two
on the paper, as well.
Oh, there were happy
experiences at camp, especially as I became more accustomed to being away from
home.  I can remember sitting around a
big campfire at Boy Scout camp after dark, surrounded by woods while the adults
told us ghost stories.  I have seldom
been afraid of the dark or ghosts and enjoyed watching a few of the other boys
who appeared to squirm uncomfortably or glance over their shoulders apprehensively.  That gave me a sadistic sense of
satisfaction.  I can remember a time when
a few boys came across what they described as a copperhead in the woods–a
sight which sent them running back to the safety of camp.  I fancied snakes and wished wholeheartedly that I had been with them, as I would have tried to capture the snake so I
could study it.
One memory lies halfway
between those which were painful and those which gave me pleasure.  It occurred during my last Boy Scout camping
experience.  I, being one who has always
believed that the safest place to be after 10 PM is at home, was resting on my
cot in my tent when I heard a commotion outside.  It seems that some of the more brazen boys
had pinned another Scout down, removed his pants, and run them up the flagpole–activity
for which I knew of no connection to being awarded a merit badge. 
I remember thanking my
lucky stars that I was not the unfortunate boy who fell victim to such
silliness, as I was precisely where I was supposed to be–safely ensconced in
my bunk.  Still, I began to wonder what
it would be like to have been among the perpetrators.  It gave me a kind of warm thrill to think
about it, but only briefly, for within a few minutes, I heard the breathless
giggles of 12-year-old ne’er-do-wells approaching my tent.  They threw back the tent flap and four rambunctious
boys rushed in and crowded around my cot. 
One was carrying a flashlight. 
Two of them held my arms and legs while the third flung the cover back
and pulled down my pajama bottoms. Although I could not see, I could almost
feel the heat of the flashlight.  I was
horrified and titillated at the same time, not knowing which reaction might be
betrayed by my very stage-frighted anatomical barometer.  “Please, God,” I thought, “don’t
let them laugh.  And where the hell are
the adults?”
As you can probably tell,
camp to me was that brief interlude in the middle of summer when I wished I
were back in school…well, except for recess, of course.  But that’s a subject for another day.
© 19 August 2013 

About the Author

I came to the beautiful state
of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I
married and I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas
by way of Michigan, the state where I married and had two children while working
as an engineer for the Ford Motor Company. I was married to a wonderful woman
for 26 happy years and suddenly realized that life was passing me by. I figured
that I should make a change, as our offspring were basically on their own and I
wasn’t getting any younger. Luckily, a very attractive and personable man just
happened to be crossing my path at that time, so the change-over was both
fortuitous and smooth.
Soon after, I retired and we
moved to Denver, my husband’s home town. He passed away after 13 blissful years
together in October of 2012. I am left to find a new path to fulfillment. One
possibility is through writing. Thank goodness, the SAGE Creative Writing Group
was there to light the way.
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Preparation, by Ricky

The Scout Motto is “Be Prepared.” I was a scout, so I learned as a young teenager to think ahead and prepared for any situation. It did not matter if it was for an upcoming camping trip, scout meeting, school tests, potential rain or snow fall, driving on less that a full tank of gas, or fixing dinner for my siblings; I always tried to have everything I might need to successfully complete the activity.

One rather dramatic failure to look ahead was when Deborah and I bought a new Toyota Land Cruiser to prepare for a job within the Sheriff’s Department which I did not get. I obtained two used “jerry cans” each of which held 5-gallons of gasoline and bolted their “holders” to the side of the vehicle. When it was time to use the gas while on a trip to Sacramento, I poured the gas into the main gas tank and soon thereafter the engine began to miss and eventually would not run at all.

Fortunately, we were near our destination in Sacramento and our friends came and towed us to their home. One of their friends diagnosed our problem to be a clogged fuel filter. I had not anticipated that the “jerry cans” were older and had rusted inside. Eventually little particles of rust in the gas had clogged the fuel filter. After installing a new fuel filter and cleaning out the “jerry cans” and refilling them with gas, we were able to finish our trip without any further trouble.

© 16 August 2015

About the Author

I was born in June of 1948 in Los Angeles, living first in Lawndale and then in Redondo Beach. Just prior to turning 8 years old in 1956, I began living with my grandparents on their farm in Isanti County, Minnesota for two years during which time my parents divorced.

When united with my mother and stepfather two years later in 1958, I lived first at Emerald Bay and then at South Lake Tahoe, California, graduating from South Tahoe High School in 1966. After three tours of duty with the Air Force, I moved to Denver, Colorado where I lived with my wife and four children until her passing away from complications of breast cancer four days after the 9-11 terrorist attack.

I came out as a gay man in the summer of 2010. I find writing these memories to be therapeutic.

My story blog is TheTahoeBoy.Blogspot.com

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Exploring, by Phillip Hoyle

I was a Boy Scout but never an Explorer. Still I had
explorations I really enjoyed. They usually took place in the stacks at the
public library, at the piano when facing a new score, or at home or office when
fulfilling a project for school or work.
These explorations kept me busy and mostly out of trouble
for years, but things have changed so much that these days I most enjoy messing
around with words in an exploration of rhythm, contrast, and other aspects of
storytelling.
You might conclude as have I that my life-long explorations
are mostly projects of mind and imagination. That’s been quite enough for me
although I do like to go to the same places by differing routes, say take the
scenic lane, stop by and see something I’ve always missed, or approach a
similar project in a slightly different manner. So today I’m reading something
again related to my childhood and continuing fascination with Native American
cultures but this time in poetic form. My interest in a peyote fan at the
Denver Art Museum served as the starting point, but the verse tells of my
childhood imaginings.
© Denver, 2013
Magic Fan
By Phillip E. Hoyle
The clutch of feathers
worked magic, at least for the boy
Who slid them over the
back of his hand,
Between his fingers,
On the skin of his face
Transporting him to a
world of freedom
Where he was one of the Indians
he had read,
Who moved freely through
the life
Of prairie and forest,
Of hunt and survival,
Through the endless
tracks of his mind.
His room, his lodge
festooned with portraits
And costumes of leather
and feather
Faithful companions in
his world of flight,
This fullness of fancy
barely
Tethered by nearness of
family.
There in his lodge, he
worked his feathers
Formed into headdress,
bustle, and fan,
Costume for his great
dream
Of being an Indian
dressed up in style
That spoke of tribal
belonging.
The basement, the space
for a dance
Of adoption, the
footwork of fancy,
Steps made real by the
presence of
Feathers that moved air
and spirit
Through ceremonial smoke
of love and desire.
His dances were brief,
three minutes or less
—sad frontier of 78s—but
He practiced the joy
Shown in dip, turn, and
stomp;
The movement expressing
the life he could feel.
His fan led the way as
he pranced,
Swift feet moving in
moccasins that
Circled the room of
ceremony and smoke.
Bustles shimmering,
bells resounding
Sisters worrying, ‘He’s
at it again.’
In echoing basement his
beads bounced
His body the drum, the
people, the dream
Of roach and shirt,
breechclout and leggings.
Of such transportation:
The magic of feather and
fan.
© Denver,
2012 
About the Author 
 Phillip Hoyle
lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In
general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two
years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now
focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE
program “Telling Your Story.”
He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com